THESE pictures show just how far burns victim Abbie Beattie has come in the past seven years.

Her happy, smiling face is a tribute both to her own bravery and to the amazing work of plastic surgeons and other medical staff at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary.

Now her family is backing the Great North Baton Challenge, a fundraising campaign by the Children’s Foundation to help equip a new world-class children’s hospital here in the North.

Abbie is a thriving 10-year- old who plays for her school’s football team and loves singing and dancing . . . yet as a toddler she almost died after she was accidentally scalded by boiling water from a kettle.

Her mum, Clare, 32, of Walker, Newcastle, still cannot bring herself to look at the photographs of her little girl taken shortly after the accident.

And she chokes up as she recalls that fateful day.

“It was less than two weeks before her third birthday,” Clare said.

“I had just had my third daughter, Caitlin, and I was making bottles for her. Abbie was standing next to the bench when she tilted over and caught the cord of the kettle.”

Abbie, a pupil at Walker Primary School, spent the next five weeks — and her third birthday — in the burns unit of the RVI.

She suffered 24 per cent burns and needed emergency skin grafts.

Clare said: “She was going into kidney failure and she was unable to see for a week because of the swelling around her eyes. “The doctors were unable to tell us if she was going to pull through.”

Thankfully she did. But repairing the damage to Abbie’s head, back and left arm, has been a long and painful journey that is still ongoing.

Abbie has undergone pioneering treatment including “tissue expanders” which required weekly injections into her head to stretch the skin. Sadly she also suffered bullying from some cruel youngsters, who called her “a freak”.

On top of everything, three years ago the specialist burns unit in the North East was under threat of being downgraded and families like Abbie’s were facing the possibility of having to travel as far as Manchester for treatment.

There was a successful fight to save it and now, with the promise of a brand new children’s hospital, the £100m Great North Children’s Hospital currently being built at the RVI, the specialist service should go from strength to strength.

What’s more, children like Abbie will benefit from a range of improved facilities that will make their hospital stay less traumatic.

For example, the hospital will feature bright play areas and even a 50-seat cinema for its young patients.

Abbie, who is a big High School Musical fan, will love that.

Clare said: “We used to take in our own DVDs to play, but a cinema would have been fantastic. I think the new hospital sounds great and I hope people will dig deep to support it.”

For more information about how you can make the Great North Children’s Hospital even greater, call the Baton hotline on 0191-282 0888.

Kids are pitching in to halp raise funds

A GROUP of dedicated school pupils have been putting their best foot forward to help build a state-of-the-art children’s hospital.

Youngsters from Lingey House Primary school in Gateshead have been taking part in the Sunday Sun-backed Great North Baton Challenge.

The appeal aims to provide funds for up-to-date facilities at the Great North Children’s Hospital.

The hospital is being built on the site of Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary.

And the £100m facility is set to become a centre for excellence in children’s healthcare — like London’s Great Ormond Street — with its first young patients due to come through the door in 2010.

On Friday around 320 children took part in a sponsored run around the park next to the school. Each class took it in turns to take the baton and do a lap of the park before handing the baton over.

The Baton Challenge is being organised by The Children’s Foundation, which wants to make sure every child treated at the new hospital has as comfortable and stress-free a stay as possible, by adding world-class activities, equipment and facilities.

Futuristic furniture with iPod attachments, visits by “clown doctors” and performing arts groups, wall projections — even 3D images of flying elephants — are just some of the ground-breaking additions we could see in the wards and treatment rooms.